a simple iOS shortcut for appending new word to vocabulary notebook

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Pre

Though I prefer view/edit text with vim/emacs and indeed there is a native app called iVim on iOS, it’s more convenient to leverage the advantages of gesture operations by using GUI apps like Obsidian for single view/check documents purpose. And I do use Obsidian on iOS for that.
recently I found two Obsidian plugins Cloze and Spaced Repetition.

Cloze can turn the specific syntax format text into a cloze.
Spaced Repetition is to review flashcard by fighting forgetting curve like Anki.
so a memo line in my vocabulary notebook should look like below:

1
- assessment :: ==估价.noun.[A more accurate assessment would be that after a couple of days of practice]== ==[ref](https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-scholars/#step-3-yasnippet-and-automatic-snippets)==

==...== is highligh format in markdown and also a cloze symbol I choose for Cloze usage.
:: is the seprator symbol for inline flashcards for Spaced Repetition, making the content around it into a set of question and awsner.

issue

Though review the content in Obsidian with iOS gesture is smooth enough, to add new word into vocabulary notebook can be hard with amount symbols and text using limited virtual iOS keyboard.

Solution

Then I come up with an idea of doing it by iOS Shortcuts.

Resource

Get shortcut from here.

addToFlashCard

  • Turn on show in share sheet for it.
  • You could add it to the home screen for quick usage.

Usage

trigger method
  • Manually: basicaly copy the tartget word then tap the addToFlashCard shortcut, copy the text then trigger it by tap a the addToFlashCard shortcut manually.
  • In share sheet: you could also trigger it by select the text then tap share action in the pop-up menu, and select addToFlashCard actoin in share sheet.
usage cases
single word

For a single word, trigger the action, When the dictionary result show on the screen, you should copy the desired text as the translation result that used for adding to the falshcard later.

word along with sentence

If you want to add a word along with the origin sentence, you could copy the whole sentence, then trigger shortcut.
pay attention: In this case you should copy the target single word again when the text prompt, this will mark it as the new word for being translated later, after this, the workflow is the same as the single word.

If you’re viewing a website when you want add a new word, then you might want to record the current URL as a reference for the review convenience, because url link can be direct to with easy tap/click gesture in many software.
To do that, you just copy the url link before you trigger the shortcut.
Pay attention, in this case, you can only select the sentence but no a single word and then trigger shortcut with the share sheet way, or it will fail.

Appendix

This shortcut function very limited, and it’s only based on personal idea that looking up the word and copying the whole result without any filters means nothing, only focusing on the meaning of a specific situation and scenario will make sense, so the interaction of selecting and copying the specific results manually could be neccessary.